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Chap. LVI.
HOUSE OF BILLE.
389
sandstone carvings, reminding me much of Voer Gaard;
built it was (as, indeed, was Vemmetofte) by a
Rosen-krantz, having first belonged to old Ellen Marsviin. On
the bridge which spans the moat stand massive lions,
bearing shields emblazoned with their arms. Mette
Rosenkrantz, wife of Peter Oxe, who built the castle
—a pious and virtuous lady, who, says her epitaph, in
all affairs combined the mien and gesture of a real
cavalier under the garments of a woman. What an awful
creature she must have been! We visited the interior;
the portraits—Madalena among the rest, in all her
glory; the chapel, where the ladies say their prayers,
in a sort of peeresses’ pew, with the retainers of the
establishment,—a second pew under the pulpit being set
apart for the deaf ones; mounted the tower to admire
the view; then, having been introduced to the original
document of the foundation, gorgeously emblazoned,
drove off on our way. In the parish church of Vallø
hang the pedigrees of the house of Bille, dating from
the seventh century. Bille is one of the most ancient
of the few remaining Danish families, though perhaps
the genealogy may be a little apocryphal. Of this
family was Lucia Bille, Danmarks Blomster, the Flower
of Denmark—la belle des belles—who lived in 1445
at the court of the Queen Dorothea, and who, to the
despair of all young and gallant men, retired to a
convent and became a nun. The manor of Billesborg
lies hard by.
Before arriving at the town of Kiøge, where we
stopped to feed and change horses, we passed the village
of Herfølge, site of the engagement between
Wellesley and Castenskiold in the early part of the present
century. In the church lies interred the last of the
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